Infrastructure Policy and Its Components in VMware Data Services Manager

When configuring VMware Data Services Manager, a vSphere administrator sets up vSphere resources for databases, providing DSM users with access to these resources. During this configuration, the vSphere administrator creates infrastructure policies that establish limits on the quality and quantity of resources DSM users can consume from vSphere clusters.

When creating databases, DSM users can rely on predefined infrastructure policies and availability and performance standards they provide. DSM users do not need to have in-depth understanding of the underlying hardware details of the infrastructure.

At the same time, the vSphere administrators have visibility into the usage of the infrastructure, and can view and monitor the database workloads running in their infrastructure.

Infrastructure policies include several components or building blocks that represent different aspects of the vSphere infrastructure. The components include compute resources, IP pools, VM classes, and storage policies. For more information about creating infrastructure policies, see Step 4: Creating Infrastructure Policies.

Note: Multiple vSphere clusters can be added as compute resources in the same infrastructure policy. You can also have multiple resource pools in the same infrastructure policy, but they cannot be from the same vSphere cluster. If you want to add multiple resource pools to the same infrastructure policy, each resource pool must be in its own vSphere cluster.

About Compute Resources

As a compute resource, a vSphere administrator can select a vSphere cluster or the resource pool for provisioning the database.

Clusters or resource pools must have one or more storage policies in common.

About Network Port Groups

Network port groups define networks and ranges of IP addresses used for database provisioning. A vSphere administrator must create or use existing network port groups for the compute resources on which the database VMs will be created. DSM supports vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS).

About IP Pools

IP pools are a collection of available IP addresses used for dynamic IP assignment for databases. They facilitate efficient distribution and management of IP resources. A vSphere administrator is responsible for regulating database IP assignment.

A vSphere administrator uses the vSphere Client to create IP pools. See Step 1: Configuring IP Pools.

About VM Classes

A VM class specifies the compute and memory resources allotted to a provisioned database VM and allows to control the size of the VM. Default VM classes are available, but a vSphere administrator can also configure custom VM classes. When you configure a VM class, you provide a name, a number of vCPUs, and a memory amount in GiBs.

For information, see Step 2: Defining a VM Class.

About Storage Policies

Storage policies determine the datastore placement of the database VMs. The policies control which type of storage is provided for the database VM and how the VM is placed within storage.

For more information about storage policices, see Storage Policy Based Management in vSphere Storage documentation.